


Tick Tick Boom

by AirgiodSLV



Category: Bandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-15
Updated: 2010-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-19 02:19:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/195766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AirgiodSLV/pseuds/AirgiodSLV
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>And see, this was where it always got complicated. Gabe was thinking recon. The mob guys were thinking hostage situation.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tick Tick Boom

**Author's Note:**

> A MacGyver AU for the [](http://no-tags.livejournal.com/profile)[**no_tags**](http://no-tags.livejournal.com/) challenge. Title stolen from The Hives. Many thanks to [](http://jocondite.livejournal.com/profile)[**jocondite**](http://jocondite.livejournal.com/) for the beta.

The job was essentially recon.

The principal of the middle school Gabe was currently scoping out was better known to some for her placement in the witness protection program, following a mob hit three years ago and her subsequent testimony against a crime boss. An undercover cop had tipped them off that little miss principal might not be as safe as the feds thought she was, which was why Gabe was here, lying on top of a wall of lockers, watching a team of five mobsters load in explosives and rifle through the computers looking for the home address of their target. His plan was basically chill out, listen in, and call the cops once he knew everything he needed to know.

Here was the thing about his job, though – the bad guys tended to have a bigger picture in mind.

When Gabe was a kid, he’d worked the underground poker tables in the city. His goal had been straightforward – gambling. The guys who ran the place, though, they had more in mind than he’d known about. They were into extortion, money-laundering, racketeering, the whole deal. Gabe had gotten _out_ of that scene because the bigger picture wasn’t in any part of his plan.

Case in point:

“We’ve got a problem,” one of the guys said, the older one with the white line on his cheek that Gabe had mentally taken to calling Scarface. “Someone was working late.”

Scarface shoved someone else into Gabe’s line of sight. Gabe was thinking dark things about witness protection chumps and rival hitmen, but then he saw the new guy stumbling to his knees on the floor and revised his opinion. This wasn’t a fed, and it wasn’t a mobster. Mob brutes all looked more or less alike: hard-bitten looks, scowls, muscle, mugs so ugly you cringed to think about their baby pictures.

New Guy looked like he ought to be moonlighting as a model for J. Crew. Well, J. Crew with the addition of an old man cardigan that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Gabe’s grandpop.

And see, this was where it always got complicated. Gabe was thinking recon. The mob guys were thinking hostage situation.

“The parking lot was empty,” Head Mobster In Charge said slowly. “No cars out front. When did you get here, and how did you get in?”

“I b-bike,” New Guy stuttered. He looked terrified out of his mind, surrounded by five big guys with guns. Gabe didn’t really blame him. “I’ve been here, it’s in-in the rack.”

HMIC took that in. “Name?” he asked.

“William Beckett.”

“On the list,” said the guy who had to be running their tech; Gabe had been calling him Nerd Alert ever since he brought in the laptop. “He’s a teacher.”

HMIC seemed to come to the same conclusion Gabe had, with regard to the likelihood of the new guy being a cop or a fed. “He was a teacher,” HMIC corrected. “Now he’s a loose end.”

Gabe swore inwardly. It’s not like he hadn’t expected to have to take care of this as soon as they’d added a fifth number to his quadratic equation, but he’d maybe been hoping they’d tie the guy up in a corner and forget about him for a while. Long enough for Gabe to cut him loose and get him the hell out of here.

Gabe glanced around the room, taking stock. There was a mop in a bucket on the floor next to the lockers, and the real prize; the door to the boiler room was open. They’d been checking around in there earlier. His angle wasn’t great, but it was better than anything else he had available.

All five mobsters had their attention on each other and their backs to Gabe. He raised his hand slowly, and he saw when the teacher’s eyes jumped to him and focused, widening. Gabe held his finger to his lips, and pointed to the poster a few feet away on the wall.

_What to do in case of a fire: Stop, drop and roll._

The guy wasn’t stupid enough to do anything obvious like nod, but his eyes dropped. He’d gotten the message.

In the meantime, the mobsters had made their decision. “We can’t do him here, too much mess,” HMIC said. “We’re wiring the bitch’s office to blow, no sense in making her jumpy with disappearances and blood on the floor. Take him out to the car.”

Teacher’s eyes jumped to Gabe, panicked, but dropped again almost immediately. He let the mobsters manhandle him up to his feet with only a minimum amount of fuss, pretending to stumble to slow them down. Good boy.

Gabe commando-crawled across the top of the lockers to the edge and slid his hand down until he found the handle of the mop. It made for a shitty projectile, but he tied the loose strings into a knot to give it slightly more stability and hefted it aloft.

“Now!” he yelled, and threw.

The teacher hit the ground like a pro and rolled out of the way. Five mobsters got hit with high-pressure steam and started shouting, but thankfully not shooting. Gabe dropped to the ground, grabbed the teacher to yank him to his feet again, and started running.

They didn’t have much time, and every door along the way was locked. “This one,” the teacher said, dragging Gabe along after him across the hall, and fumbled in his pocket.

“We don’t have time,” Gabe started, but then the teacher jammed a key into the lock and flung the door open. They both dove in and Gabe kicked the door shut behind him, locking it again. “It’s not going to hold them long,” he said quietly. “They’ll go room by room.”

“There’s only the one door out,” the teacher said. “None of the windows open more than a crack, and we’re on the low side of the hill. It’s a long drop even if we break the glass.”

Gabe appreciated that even as shaken up as the guy was, he wasn’t wasting time by asking questions like _Who are you?_ and _Who are they?_ and _My God, they’re trying to kill us, aren’t they?_ Gabe had more important things to think about at the moment.

He glanced around the classroom. “What we need,” he said quietly, “is a diversion.”

“What, like, one of us yells and waves their arms, and the other one sets an ambush?” Teacher didn’t look thrilled at that prospect. He was probably imagining he’d have to be the one doing the arm-waving.

“Too risky,” Gabe replied. “They might not want to make a mess, but I’d rather they didn’t get the chance to shoot either of us. No, we need something with a little bang.” He looked over the posters on the walls and said, feeling it had to be too good to be true, “We’re in the _science_ classroom?”

“We’re in my classroom, yes,” the teacher said, tugging at the sleeves of his cardigan and pushing his glasses up his nose. “William Beckett, substitute science teacher.”

“Substitute, huh?” Gabe said. “You picked a shitty week to come in to work. Any chance you’re the sort to keep potassium chlorate on hand?”

William crawled over to the cabinet/mini-fridge combo and pulled out his keys again. “There’s not a lot.”

“I don’t need much.” Gabe went through the other cabinet until he found a glass sample jar and set it out over the gas stovetop. “What I _do_ need is…”

“Sucrose,” William finished. He caught Gabe’s eye and smiled quickly. “Science teacher. Check the top middle drawer of the desk, there ought to be something.”

Gabe yanked the drawer open and rifled through the plastic packets. “Fuck, all this is yours? How are you that skinny?” He came up with a half-finished bag of gummy bears and tipped a handful onto the table. “I’m gonna need some ice, too. Think you can chip any loose?”

William passed him the potassium chlorate and Gabe transferred it carefully into the glass dish, setting up a suspension tripod over the burner and turning the heat on low. William was struggling with the ice, so Gabe checked the desk drawers again until he found a metal ruler. Another two seconds of searching turned up a hand-sized American flag on a stick, the kind kids waved around at parades. He pulled it out of the coffee mug it had been inhabiting and tore the cloth free of the dowel rod, wrapping it around one end of the ruler to blunt the sharp edges.

“Here, use this. I need a block of it.”

William took the ruler and stared at him. “You’re defiling the flag? What kind of police officer are you?”

Gabe grimaced and grinned all at once. “The unofficial kind. I don’t have a gun either, in case you were wondering.”

William look distinctly disappointed at that, but Gabe didn’t think it was because he was particularly the bloodthirsty type, just the type to know that five-against-two odds weren’t the greatest. He passed over a chunk of ice chipped out of the mini-fridge’s freezer compartment and shook out his hand. There was a thin red line along his palm where the ruler had bitten into it through the flimsy cloth, but no blood that Gabe could see. “What else?”

The potassium chlorate was turning molten quite nicely. Gabe set the ice next to the burner and made a sticky pyramid of gummy bears on top of it. “Should be making you do this,” he muttered, balancing the last one and holding his hands carefully around it for a second to make sure it stayed. “I’m a vegan. Okay, that’ll do it. Now we get out of sight.”

He looked up. The ceiling in the classroom was solid above an additional layer of pipes, stretching tangled out across the length of the room. That would work.

Gabe double-checked the ice and jumped up to catch one of the pipes. “Can you get up here?”

William thankfully caught on quickly. He moved further out, away from the door and out of Gabe’s way – smart guy – and then caught another pipe, hauling himself up until he could collapse over it, reaching for the next one over to pull himself along into the web.

If they were spotted and shot at up here, of course, they were sitting ducks and shit out of luck. Gabe sincerely hoped it wouldn’t come to that. “Get ready,” he ordered. The ice was melting more rapidly now, and the side nearest the burner was showing a distinctive lead. Gabe heard a voice just as the chunk of melting ice shifted, deflating on the side next to the burner, and dumped the lead gummy bear into the potassium chlorate.

The result was just as spectacular as Gabe had hoped it would be. There were bursts of fireworks, flames shooting up out of the sample dish, and even better, the loud crackle-pop of the gummy bear meeting a fiery chemically-reactive end.

It didn’t take long for the mobster nearest them to bash in the lock and kick the door open, gun drawn. Gabe waited for him to check the room, to creep slightly closer to the fading display of sugary pyrotechnics and lower his gun halfway to the ground, and then he made his move.

He dropped from the ceiling, hanging onto the pipe above him, and kicked the gun out of the mobster’s hand – it was the tall one, Gabe had nicknamed him Oak Tree – before wrapping both legs around the guy’s neck. If Oak Tree had a knife, this was about to get a lot more painful, but he didn’t seem to. He scrabbled uselessly at Gabe’s shins while Gabe squeezed and hung onto the pipes for all he was worth, and then Oak Tree’s oxygen supply finally went critical and he passed out, falling to the floor with a thud so loud it made Gabe wince as he let go of the pipe and dropped lightly to the floor.

The gun he kicked away into the corner of the room, and then he stooped to check the guy’s pulse. Still there; he was out for the count, but not dead. Good. That was one down, four…

He froze at the familiar sound of a safety clicking off. “Turn around slowly,” a rough voice said. “Hands in the air.”

Gabe held up his hands in plain sight, thinking frantically even as he stood and turned very slowly around…

Just in time to see William raise the fire extinguisher from the wall and bring it down hard over the second guy’s head. Scarface hit the floor right next to his buddy Oak Tree, collapsing into an unconscious heap.

“Thanks,” Gabe said, grinning. “Now let’s move.”

He pulled William into the hallway behind him, checking both ways before leaving the dubious cover of the classroom. “We’re not taking the guns?” William whispered.

“I don’t like guns,” Gabe whispered back. “They get messy. Which way to the exit from here?”

“There are three doors,” William told him, sliding closer. He smelled nice, Gabe noted with a distant part of his brain. Not like wool and mothballs at all. Appearances could be deceiving. “Two of them are chained and padlocked, and I don’t have the key. The other one is to the left and down the hall, around the corner to the right next to the nurse’s office.”

That was the way they were going, then. Gabe slid along the wall as much as possible, keeping William behind the meager shelter of his own body as he listened for any sign that they might have company soon.

They were nearly to the corner when a flash of movement ahead caught Gabe’s eye. He stepped back and sideways, dragging William through the door directly behind them and closing the door with a near-inaudible click.

“They’ve got a guy on the door,” Gabe murmured, dropping to the floor to peer through the crack under the door. “Obviously they know about this being the only exit as well.”

He couldn’t see much, but he thought he recognized the shoes as belonging to Fat Baldy, which meant that at least his count of five was still likely accurate. Three more at large, then. HMIC and Nerd Alert were most likely in the principal’s office, setting the explosives.

He rolled into a sitting position, back against the door. Think, Gabe.

“There’s an alarm button behind glass next to the door,” William said quietly. “If we can hit that, it will automatically call the police.”

Hitting an alarm button seemed infinitely easier than taking out a bruiser who was holding down their only exit with a semi-automatic and a clear view of the only hallway. Well, maybe not infinitely. Somewhat easier.

Gabe focused on his surroundings. Nurse’s office. There had to be something in here. Making a snap decision, he crawled to the desk and snatched the pencil can off the top, rifling through until he found some decent-sized pencils and a wide rubber band.

After a few seconds, William seemed to catch on to what he was doing. “ _Slingshot?_ ” he hissed, slithering over to Gabe’s side. “ _That’s_ your plan? What is this, David and Goliath?”

“Do you have any liquid nitrogen lying around?” Gabe asked, leaning a little on the sarcasm and trying not to hope too much that William actually did. “Because that’s my only other thought, and I don’t have the shit to build a cannon without it.”

William stared at him silently for a long moment. “I do,” he said abruptly. “Ethanol. We’re in the nurse’s office, there has to be some in here.”

Gabe stared back, then told himself to snap out of it and made a grab for the first aid kit. “How pure?” he asked.

William was busy trying to rip apart a reusable plastic bottle, the kind hikers took with them because they were lightweight and durable. Polyethylene. Gabe thanked fuck the nurse was apparently actually the healthy type, and not some overweight old biddy with a bad temper. He tossed William his pocketknife and tried not to read anything into how much he enjoyed the grateful smile William flashed him in return.

“Over 95%,” William answered, sawing off the plastic handle looped around the neck of the bottle. “I’m also going to need a couple of nails.”

“Have you got a key for this?” Gabe asked, thumbing the lock on the first aid kit.

William looked up and raised an eyebrow at him. “You can make a liquid nitrogen cannon but you can’t pick a lock? What kind of government agent are you?”

Gabe considered rolling his eyes, because he owed William that much. And he did have access to medical tools, at least some of which had to resemble lock picks, but, well. It was a flimsy lock, and easier just to bust it open on the edge of the nurse’s desk.

That mission accomplished, Gabe rolled the bottle of ethanol over to William and started hunting for nails. The cabinet was metal, the bookshelf held together by screws…ah. There they were, tucked into the back under the shelf. He looked around to see if William was done with his knife, but William had moved from bottle-mutilation to hacking apart the corkboard on the wall next to the door, so Gabe left him to it. Sweeping the books onto the floor, he wedged his arm in on top of the shelf and applied a decent amount of pressure directly downward.

The shelf gave with a pitiful crack, and Gabe looked over reflexively to see William staring at him, knife in one hand and a chunk of cork in the other. “Do you think you could be any louder?” he whispered furiously. “I’m not building a Gatling gun over here.”

“It’s like that saying,” Gabe answered cheerfully, prying the nails out and shoving the ruined shelf out of his way. “I can do quick and quiet, quick and effective, or quiet and effective, but you don’t get all three.”

William rolled his eyes, which just made Gabe grin harder. “I’m going to need power,” he said, “but we’re almost ready over here.”

Power. Gabe could do that. He grabbed the standing ultra-bright light and pulled it down, unscrewing the bulb and yanking the wires loose. William had apparently poured the ethanol into the bottle and stopped it up with the rough chunk of corkboard, because he was shaking it now, bringing the ethanol vapor to equilibrium with the liquid inside. He held out a hand for the nails and pushed them in on either side of the bottle when Gabe provided them, adjusting their positions carefully.

“We’re only going to get one shot at this,” he warned, setting the bottle down on the ground, “but we have a cannon.”

“Wait,” Gabe said, rooting in his pocket. Grabbing the medical tape from the open first aid kit, he affixed the laser pointer to one side of the bottle and wrapped the tape around the outside, careful to avoid the nails. Grinning, he told William, “Now we have a _laser-guided_ cannon.”

He flicked the laser pointer on and nodded for William to man the light switch. “I’m going to take out the glass first,” he explained. “After that, it’s all you.”

“And the guy with the gun,” William whispered in reminder, but he was braced against the wall with one finger on the switch, ready and waiting.

There were several dozen decorative marbles holding down the silk flower arrangement in the vase on the nurse’s desk. Gabe fitted one into his rubber-band slingshot, six more lined up on the floor in front of him. “On the count of three,” he said, reaching for the doorknob and letting it swing silently open. He pulled the rubber band back slowly, took aim…

And saw the guard’s posture straighten abruptly as they were spotted.

“Three!” Gabe yelled, letting the first marble fly. The glass shattered around the alarm button, and he saw William leap for the cannon, swinging the laser pointer around to aim true.

The ethanol cannon went off with a tremendous bang as William set off a spark between the two nails inside the vapor-filled bottle, igniting the ethanol, and Gabe barely registered the flashing light of the alarm button, punched hard by the projectile cork, before he was letting another marble fly.

The trophy cases filled with sports memorabilia had glass panes that went nearly floor to ceiling. Gabe shattered them all, shooting marble after marble, and heard Fat Baldy yell in pain and outrage but not, unfortunately, drop the gun.

“Go!” Gabe yelled, shoving William out the door and following hard on his heels. They slammed through one of the double-doors into the gym just as the rat-a-tat of gunfire erupted behind them. “Get the stick!” he called, and William tossed him one of the wooden hockey sticks left piled on the floor, wedging the other into the push-bar controlling the doors to keep them shut. Gabe jammed his in the other direction and started sprinting.

“There’s no other way out,” William reminded him, hard on his heels.

“We don’t need to get out. The alarm’s been set off, the police are on their way. We just need to stay alive long enough for them to get here.” Gabe skidded to a halt in front of the set of double doors at the far end of the gym. “Do your keys open any other doors?”

“Staff meeting room, to the left,” William panted, waiting for Gabe to check that the hallway was clear before they spilled out into it. Gabe let William take the lead, noting things along the way and listening while William searched through his keys.

The staff meeting room was reasonably sized, with a kitchenette off the side. That improved Gabe’s mood dramatically. There were a multitude of things he could do, given access to a heat source and electrical appliances.

William locked the door, and was drawing breath to speak when Gabe heard a noise and clapped a hand over his mouth. He listened hard, straining to hear it again, and was only somewhat distracted when William bit down relatively gently to demand release. Gabe dropped his hand away, but kept it on William’s arm, just because. They might have to send physical signals in lieu of auditory ones. Gabe was prepared for any eventuality.

“They can’t have gone far. Check every door,” he heard, in the sweet, dulcet tones of Head Mobster In Charge. “Smash the locks if you have to.”

Not a great deal of time available, then. William looked at him, his hair curling in a comma around one sharp cheekbone, eyes widened to ask, _What now?_

Gabe wished he had an answer for that.

Shaking his head for patience, he started rifling through cabinets. There was almost always something handy where you might least expect it. He found the usual Styrofoam cups, plastic cutlery, a few coffee mugs with the paint chipped off, and one sharp knife, probably for cakes if there was a special occasion. He handed that to William, because it was better than nothing. Then he thought harder about the cakes.

Someone on the teaching staff was the celebratory sort. He found a pack of birthday candles and an open bag of balloons along with a pie server in one of the smaller drawers. The first balloon he pulled out had a tear; he tossed that one aside and tried the next, blowing a breath of air into the rubber to inflate it.

“Okay, science whiz,” he whispered, showing William the balloon. “Think you can whip up some hydrogen for me?”

William’s eyes went to the faucet, which was a good thought, but they didn’t have time for old-fashioned electrolysis. Gabe pulled open the cabinet doors under the sink and rooted around until he found what he was looking for. “Shortcut,” he offered, holding up the bottle of toilet bowl cleaner. William eyes widened with understanding, and then he practically jerked the bottle out of Gabe’s hands as he scrambled to set up what he needed.

Gabe found a glass bottle of vinegar in one of the cupboards above the sink and dumped the contents into a succession of coffee mugs. He needed the bottle more than he needed the vinegar, but if they found any steel wool, it might come in handy for starting a fire later. His next challenge was finding tubing to transfer the hydrogen gas, but even as he looked around to start searching for it, he saw William hacking apart a length of water hose from the cleaning closet with Gabe’s pocketknife.

“I’m going to need that back at some point, you know,” Gabe whispered, trying (and failing) not to grin too hard at the look William threw his way.

Gabe found aluminum foil next to a box of plastic wrap in another drawer and slid it across the counter to William, who was jamming the hose through a hole he’d stabbed out in the side of an empty plastic water cooler bottle. William started shredding the aluminum and dropping it through the neck of the glass bottle, so Gabe turned his attention to finding more useful tools for the next phase of the plan. Namely string, and if he could find it, a long wooden stick.

The next time he turned around, William had the aluminum foil doused with toilet bowl cleaner, and the rubber hose stuck securely into the mouth of the glass vinegar bottle. The other end of the hose was piping hydrogen gas into plastic water cooler jug, through the water William was using to filter it before it rose to the top, where Gabe’s balloon capped the mouth of the jug and began to slowly twitch to life as it filled with hydrogen.

“What the _fuck_ are you doing here?” Gabe asked, caught in a dizzying mix of admiration and lust.

“Ph.D. candidate in organic chemistry,” William answered with a smile of his own. “This is a part-time job to help pay off school loans.”

Gabe forcibly reminded himself that now was not the time to see if William would be up for sex on top of the meeting table. He suspected, possibly with some wishful thinking involved, that the glint in William’s eye meant he would. At a more appropriate moment.

“Okay, timing this thing’s going to be a bitch, so be careful,” Gabe warned, tying his string around the balloon and nudging it carefully free of the bottle to float slightly upward. “Get the matches from the birthday drawer, we’re going to light it when we hear someone start to break the lock.”

“If it goes off too soon we’re fucked,” William pointed out, settling on the floor with the box of matches and picking through them to find the fresh ones.

“If it goes off too late, we’re dead,” Gabe countered. “So let’s hope we get it right.”

He had a yardstick, which was heavy and clumsy but the best thing he could find in the room to keep the balloon more or less where he wanted it. The string he snipped off just above floor-level, so it dangled beneath their hydrogen-filled balloon.

“Once the string is lit, we need to take cover,” Gabe whispered, guiding the balloon toward the door and crouching down behind the counter in the kitchen.

“No fucking shit,” William hissed in return, crawling over to the dangling string. Which was when they both heard the heavy slam of a gun butt bashing in the door lock and froze.

Gabe whipped his free hand through the air in a gesture he hoped William would interpret as _light it!_ William did, apparently, because he struck the match – which miraculously caught on the first strike – and held the burning tip to the end of the string.

It would have been less nerve-wracking if they’d had a longer fuse, but there was no way around it. Gabe just held his breath until William crash-dove to safety behind the counter, right as Fat Baldy kicked the door in.

Fat Baldy caught sight of Gabe at once, eyes drawn by William’s movement. What he didn’t see was the balloon, although Gabe doubted he would have understood even if he had. For a second they both stared at each other, and then Fat Baldy started to raise his gun, just as the flame traveling steadily up the length of string reached the balloon – or rather, the hydrogen-filled _bomb_ – and exploded in a massive fireball.

Gabe let go of the stick and flung himself down on top of William, hearing Fat Baldy’s scream of pain over the whoosh of the hydrogen burning up in an instant. After another second Gabe crawled out, wary of other mobsters being drawn to the noise, but all he saw was Fat Baldy on the ground, lying still. Gabe checked the pulse on his wrist, away from the worst of the burns.

“He needs an ambulance, but he’ll live,” Gabe reported.

“I can’t tell you what a weight that is off my mind,” William replied in a dry, warm drawl that made Gabe’s own pulse jump. William dusted himself off and walked on mostly-steady legs over to where Gabe was crouched next to the downed mobster. “How many more of them are there?”

“Just two,” Gabe answered, hoping he was correct on that. “And only one gun.” Nerd Alert hadn’t been packing. He had been carrying a box full of explosives, which tended to even the score a little, but Gabe chose not to mention that. He was thinking positive.

“Where now?” William asked. He sounded edgy, and Gabe couldn’t really blame him. They had a trail of broken locks behind them, and not many more good places to hide. His next stop would be the cafeteria, if he weren’t more worried about Nerd Alert and that bomb.

“Now,” he decided after a pause for thought, “we visit the principal’s office.”

William didn’t look sold on that plan, but he just said, “Down the hall to the right,” and stepped over Fat Baldy to hold the door open.

Gabe stopped William with a hand in the center of his chest as they approached the office. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the dental mirror he’d swiped from the nurse’s office and angled it around the door frame. No one in the main office, but the door to the principal’s office was just beyond it, and he could see at least one person in there, surrounded by wires and plastique.

Holding a finger to his lips, he dropped to the floor and commando-crawled across the carpet to take cover behind the reception desk. Sneaking the mirror over the top of the desk, he took in Nerd Alert, the open laptop, the explosives lining the desk, and the timer Nerd Alert was still configuring.

Stupid and clumsy. A real professional would have brought in the bomb already made up.

Gabe crawled back out into the hallway, motioning for William to follow him into the safety of a nearby restroom. “He’s still fucking with the wires,” Gabe explained. “I’ve got an idea. You smoke?”

William shook his head, which didn’t surprise Gabe at all, honestly. A skinny dude who biked to work probably wasn’t huffing down a pack a day. And he was pleased by the answer; it just meant that his idea might need some modification.

Or possibly not. “The receptionist does, though,” William whispered. His voice echoed in the bare room; he grimaced and leaned even closer, breathing softly into Gabe’s ear. “Top right-hand drawer, she keeps a pack in there for her breaks.”

His lips brushed Gabe’s earlobe as he spoke, but Gabe somehow managed not to turn his head and surprise William with the warmth of Gabe’s mouth on his. Not yet.

“I’ve got it,” he murmured, making the most of the opportunity to press his mouth hot against William’s ear. “You stay here.”

He was almost out the door when he heard William hiss. Twisting around, Gabe raised his eyebrow and received an eye roll in return. “You might want these,” William whispered, and tossed him the box of matches. Gabe grinned at him and ducked back out into the hallway.

The receptionist’s desk faced an inconvenient direction, but luckily Gabe was prepared for that. Staying out of sight, he tossed one end of the rest of his wad of string through the drawer handle, and tugged both ends to slide it slowly open.

Thank fuck for William, he thought, as he stuck his mirror over the top of the desk again and followed it with his hand. There were three cigarettes left in the crumpled pack. Gabe struck a match, wincing at the hiss of sound, and lit them all, one after another.

It tasted disgusting, but he got enough going after a second to tilt his head back and blow out a breath, smiling to himself, toward the smoke detector blinking patiently on the ceiling. A few puffs later, the smoke curled through the vent and tripped the alarm.

They were in a school. The fire alarm didn’t just set off flashing lights and sirens, it also triggered the sprinkler system. Gabe heard the shout of surprise from inside the principal’s office, and then the crackle- _bang_ of exposed wires bursting into a shower of sparks and flame.

Nerd Alert flew back into the wall and cracked his head hard enough to drop him like a sack of potatoes. That took care of one more guy and the bomb, all at once. “Four,” he said, grinning at the wreckage, and then turned for the second time that day to find someone standing behind him with a gun.

“I’d ask who you are, but I don’t care,” Head Mobster In Charge told him. “So just tell me where your friend is, and we’ll go for a walk.”

“Friend?” Gabe answered, raising his voice to be heard over the wailing sirens. “What friend?”

“Skip it,” HMIC said. “I can find him myself, but cooperating will prolong your life and make mine easier.”

“It won’t prolong mine all that much,” Gabe pointed out, taking a casual step sideways. The receptionist’s chair was on wheels; if he could duck behind the desk and spin the chair out at the same time, catch the guy in the knees with enough force to make him stagger…

“In that case,” HMIC said with a tone of very little patience, clicking off the gun’s safety, “I think it’s safe to say I have no more need of…”

He jerked suddenly, eyes wide, and his limbs spasmed wildly. Gabe ducked as the gun went off, chipping the plaster just behind his head. Then both gun and mobster hit the floor, still twitching, to reveal William holding a portable work light and a live wire, plastic cover stripped away to expose the electric current.

“You _Tasered_ him?” Gabe asked in disbelief, checking the guy’s pulse to make sure he didn’t need CPR.

William yanked the plug out of the socket, decreasing their chances of death by electrocution with the sprinklers still pouring down merrily around them. His hair was plastered to his face and his sopping cardigan looked like it weighed more than he did, but his grin was wide and bright.

“I thought we could do this one old school,” he explained, tossing the light to the ground. “Is that all of them?”

“Marry me,” Gabe said sincerely. “I can make a battery out of a lemon.”

“I can make an electric motor out of a plastic cup, two magnets and some paper clips,” William replied, smiling.

Gabe blinked. “Seriously?”

“Well.” William shrugged, smile growing slowly. “It helps if I have a rubber band.”

Gabe grinned and shook his head. “At least you shouldn’t have to tonight. We’ll still have to stick around to give statements to the cops when they show up, but that’s it.”

“Good,” William said, and Gabe could see the signs of shock just starting to set in, under the outer crust of composure.

“Come here,” Gabe said. He wasn’t any warmer than William was, but he could strip the heavy cardigan off of William’s thin shoulders and wrap his arms around him, sharing what body heat he could in the chilling shower of the sprinklers. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” William answered, muffled against Gabe’s neck. “I think lectures and seminars are going to be pretty boring after this, though.”

Gabe chuckled. “Forget grad school,” he murmured, lips pressed against William’s temple. “After this, I’m never letting you go. How do you feel about an exciting career as a government agent?”

“Sounds dangerous,” William answered, laughing, and tipped his face up into the artificial rain to claim a kiss.

It was adrenaline, Gabe knew, but that didn’t stop him from backing William into the receptionist’s desk and hoisting him up onto it so that he could get his hands on even more of William’s warm, damp skin. William wrapped his arms around Gabe and pulled him down, so Gabe gamely slid a knee up onto the desk and crawled up on top of him. The cops would make noise when they arrived, he was sure. They’d have plenty of time.

“I’ve seen this part of the movie,” William said, arching his head back to give Gabe access to the pale column of his throat. “This is where it turns out the bad guys aren’t out of the picture after all, and they return unexpectedly when you’ve just been lulled into a false sense of security.”

“I don’t know,” Gabe replied, glancing at the mobster on the floor before returning his attention – and his mouth – to William’s pulse-point. “He looks pretty crispy.”

William laughed. “I don’t even know your name,” he murmured, as their lips parted from another deep, slow kiss.

Gabe grinned down at him and nuzzled his way back to William’s mouth. “We’ll get to that. I promise.”


End file.
